The Gold Humanism Honor Society (GHHS) was created by the Arnold P. Gold Foundation in 2002 as a way to identify and honor medical students, residents, fellows, and physicians in practice who not only show intellectual excellence, but who have outstanding personal and clinical skills and who fostered special bonds with their patients and colleagues. Now with over 23,000 members, GHHS now has grown to be an incredible force for good.
GHHS is much more than just an honorific. With membership comes our hope that throughout their careers, our members will help to promote compassionate, supportive medical environments for colleagues and patients alike. The GHHS national office encourages a mentoring focus for its medical student and resident chapters as well as among its thousands of practicing members. The provision of peer-to-peer support through role modeling, friendship, counseling, and enhanced communication promotes a sense of confidence and personal development. By leading peer mentoring programs, GHHS members hope to have a positive impact on preventing burnout, addressing the hidden curriculum, and developing satisfying patient connections.
Over the years, our GHHS chapters have created amazing programs to foster support for patients, families, and the healthcare team. These ideas have been compiled in an incredible new resource called the GHHS Gold Guide, available to anyone interested in enhancing his or her medical learning environment. Entries were shared by GHHS members from a variety of educational settings with the hopes that others would benefit from their experiences.
Please use these ideas as jumping off points to create your own individualized activities tailored to the needs of your institution. Contact us with any programs or activities you would like to contribute to this guide, as we look forward to seeing it grow.
Finally, we encourage you to implement programs to enhance your learning environment and to study them to see if they are effective. Only through research will we know which programs are most effective in improving the way medical students, residents, attending physicians, other health care providers, and our patients learn from and help one another.
